Transfusions: Their influence on human renal graft survival

The authors studied the effect of pregraft transfusion on renal graft survival in 109 patients who had received renal transplantation in Oxford. the overall 1-year graft survival was 69%. One-year survival in the nontransfused patients was 56% compared with 78% in the transfused patients. Patients given only one transfusion showed significantly prolonged graft survival. No interaction was found between the transfusion effect and recipient blood group, sex, parity, cytotoxic antibody status, or degree of HLA-A and -B matching. but, the nontransfused but well DR-matched group did considerably better survival than the nontransfused poorly DR-matched group, though not quite as well as transfused group. The authors suggested that minimum blood transfusion policies were mistaken and that every patient should have received at least one transfusion. (Yammamura - Osaka)